I think this is good advice. I have actually been thinking that I am going to pick a subject and intentionally write a goofy song. I will expect it to not be good. If it turns out decent it will be a pleasant surprise. The more I think about this idea the more I have started to like it.
Right, it's more about forgetting the good vs. bad metric altogether, than about trying to write a bad song. (Don't reject a good idea, if you're lucky enough to have one LOL.) Truth is, the artist is often the last person to know anyway. But you don't want to be judging your own work while it's in process, or get distracted imagining what anyone else will think when you're done. These are anathema to the creative process.
I can't take any credit for this "stop thinking about whether it's good or bad" idea. Nelson and McCartney notwithstanding... Years ago I was bemoaning a decades-long writer's block with a friend, and he said something like, "You seem to be really caught up in whether this material (that doesn't even exist yet) is any good. Maybe just let that go." And at the time I thought, "Of course I want it to be good, who TF wouldn't??" It took years for me to really process this simple observation.
TGF's "Do Something" was a big help, too. I hadn't recorded anything in years, but I wanted to participate. I warned everybody, "Maybe I'll just submit 20 seconds of a sine wave." I wasn't entirely joking.
So I submitted some simple off the cuff crap, and wound up going from my average 0 songs a year to maybe 2 and a half. But in terms of percentages, that's an infinite improvement!
There are a lot of fills and background playing in these songs.
There's a lot of value in identifying all of those details (fills, harmony parts, etc.) and drilling them in. Even if they're not parts you like very much... maybe
especially if they're not parts you like very much? Be brutally honest about timing, dynamics, etc. There's so much to learn just chasing this stuff down, nailing it, and understanding why it works.
